Dice and Gods on the Silk Road

Brandon Dotson, D.Phil. (2007), University of Oxford, is an Associate Professor at Georgetown University. He has published various books and articles on early Tibet and on Dunhuang manuscripts, including The Old Tibetan Annals (VÖAW, 2009).Constance A. Cook, Ph.D. (1990), University of California, Berkeley, is NIH Distinguished Professor at Lehigh University. She has published a number of books and articles on ancient China, including Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao (Harvard, 2017).Zhao Lu, Ph.D. (2013), University of Pennsylvania, is Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at New York University Shanghai and Global Network Assistant Professor at New York University. He is the author of In Pursuit of the Great Peace (SUNY, 2019).

• Preface and AcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesAbbreviationsIntroduction: Playing Dice with the Gods1 Meta-Divination2 Gambling with the Gods3 Dice Gaming and Dice Divination4 A Relational Network of Gods, Dice, Books, Divination Users, and Mantic Figures5 Outline of the Work1 The Divination of Maheśvara1 The Manuscript2 Introducing the Divination of Maheśvara3 The Gods and Spirits in the Divination of Maheśvara4 Translation and Transcription of the Divination of Maheśvara2 The Divination of Maheśvara and Chinese Numerical Trigram Divination1 Material Culture and Ritual Process in Chinese Numerical Trigram Texts2 Numerical Trigrams in the Stalk Divination and the Baoshan Divination Record3 The Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method and the Sutra on the Divination of Good and Bad Karmic Retribution4 A Case Study in Transmission: The Tricks of Jing, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and the Guan Gongming Divination Method5 Poetry, Talismans, and Divination3 The Divination of Maheśvara and Indic Dice Divination1 The Divination of Maheśvara and Two Other Tenth-Century Dunhuang Dice Divination Codices2 Ninth-Century Tibetan Dice Divination Texts from Dunhuang, Turfan, and Mazār Tāgh3 Sanskrit Dice Divination Texts from Kucha4 The Archeology and Mythology of Pāśaka DiceConclusions: Inheriting the WindAppendix: Divining with Sixteen Numerical TrigramsBibliographyIndex

"Equally comparative in its cross- cultural evaluation and philological in its textual analysis, this volume offers a fascinating insight into not only Chinese divination practices but also the broader field of divination practices in general." - Joseph Chadwin, Religious Studies Review, 47/4 (2021).